


Normal Service Will Resume

by entanglednow



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Drugs, F/M, Humor, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-07
Updated: 2009-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The odds of being allowed to leave were directly reliant on how many visible stitches she had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normal Service Will Resume

Lisbon wakes up in the hospital, which is _never_ a good start to any day.

She spends a confused couple of minutes wondering why exactly she's in the hospital. She thinks she vaguely remembers a building falling on her. Which seems a little far fetched- but no, there was definitely some sort of structural collapse involved.

Which explains the hospital.

It could be worse. She could have woken up _underneath_ a building.

She's not sure how badly she's broken herself. Her mouth tastes funny and her skin hurts. Though she knows from experiences that the odds of being allowed to leave were directly reliant on how many visible stitches she had.

Working on that rule her chances weren't good. It seems like she can feel that familiar throbbing, aching itch everywhere.

Which tells her another thing.

It tells her there are drugs involved.

She's fairly sure without the drugs she'd be a lot less happy.

A doctor and a nurse come in, and he prods her and shines a light in her eyes, and generally does his best to be irritating over the top of his glasses at her.

Then they leave her alone, presumably in the hope that she gets better by osmosis. Or more likely they've decided she's no longer medically interesting and gone to do more important hospital things.

She lays there for what feels like a very long time.

According to the clock it's seven minutes.

There's still a needle in her arm, which suggests the drugs are not of the _are bad_ variety. Her body is very obviously working on the 'don't look behind the curtain' philosophy. So she decides not to poke at it.

Her good intentions last exactly ten minutes. Then she decides she's most definitely _not_ going to lay on her back any longer.

It's more work than she originally thought to get upright, but she's not one to leave a job half finished. She's considerably less happy, and much less comfortable when she gets there, but she's going to count it as a victory anyway.

When she looks up again, Jane is standing just inside the door. Which is an annoying sort of magic trick that doesn't involve _actual_ magic so much as her not paying attention and Jane taking advantage of it.

"I came to see how you are," Jane tells her. When he really means 'I was watching you and finding you amusing.' She figures she can't be too badly broken if Jane's making fun of her. Which is a strange sort of relief.

"You came to see if I was dead," she corrects, and finds her voice thinner and threadier than she would like.

"The others are outside, they wanted to come in but I told them you'd be cross if they snuck up on you while you were unconscious."

Which is broadly true. Jane is very annoying when he's reading the things you don't even really want to admit to yourself.

She glares at him.

He smiles back, which he does a lot. She finds Patrick Jane's natural immunity to her displeasure immensely irritating. Even more irritating is the fact that she seems to be getting used to it.

Of course, a building had fallen on her there's the nasty possibility that he's just a hallucination.

"I'm not a hallucination if that's what you're wondering," Jane says cheerfully.

"That's exactly what you'd say if you were a hallucination," she accuses immediately, then attempts to look like she isn't mostly broken in a hospital bed.

It's pretty much a losing battle. But it doesn't stop her trying.

When she stops trying she finds Jane grinning at her like a lunatic, which makes her briefly wonder if he's the one with possible head injuries. But then when has he ever needed head injuries to act like a lunatic.

"What?" she asks.

"You're smiling."

She makes herself stop.

"Cho was very upset that you wouldn't let him come into the collapsing building after you."

"See this is a good thing when people do as they're told," Lisbon points out, though whether Jane will take any notice is debateable.

"Not always," Jane provides around a grin that knows something she doesn’t. But then when does it not. She ignores it. "You never do as you're told and look at you."

"Funny," she says, while making it obvious she thinks exactly the opposite.

Jane smiles at her, in that way he does, like, not only does he know something she doesn't but that it's awesome, and she should be jealous.

She scowls at him on principle.

"Your building fell on me too," Jane tells her, almost as an afterthought.

"Huh." Lisbon decides that's more a sound of dubious disbelief than curious sympathy.

Because Jane looks more dishevelled than crushed by masonry.

"You don't believe me?" Now his expression is entirely amused.

Lisbon's thinking about believing him. But she doesn't remember him being in the building with her. Though her memory isn't exactly sharp and coherent at the moment.

Jane lifts his shirt and displays a bruise that winds its way round his waist. It looks like he got slammed into something sideways. Normally Lisbon would wince in sympathy, but she thinks she probably has way better bruises than that, they're just hiding under all the drugs and stitches.

"Nasty," she allows.

"It certainly makes itself known at inconvenient moments."

She has a strange and random impulse to reach out and touch.

That's probably the drugs too.

"Did you wrangle your way out of a hospital bed?"

Jane does his enigmatic smiling thing again, which is probably a yes. But she figures if he thought he was actually dying, or bleeding internally he'd have the good sense to stay around the hospital. Which isn't exactly a comforting thought considering.

He sits down on the bed, tips it just enough that Lisbon feels all the after-echoes of stitched up skin.

She says nothing, though he apologises anyway.

When she turns her head he's much closer, and she knows she's been here longer than he has, knows that he's gone and come back. Because he smells normal under the hospital smell, in fact he smells good. Some sort of strange mixture of expensive and inherently male.

"Why thank you," Jane tells her on the tail end of a laugh.

Apparently drugs make her say things out loud that she doesn't mean to.

"We will never speak of this," Lisbon tells him.

Jane laughs, in a way that tells her he finds the likelihood of that hilarious.

She glares at him. "Obey me, I have stitches." It's pretty good as threats go.

Jane's irritatingly hard to threaten.

"Also handcuffs, and a gun."


End file.
